


Think On Your Feet

by Twelve (Dodici)



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Gen, Glimmer Swears, Post-Season 4, because Catra is a swearing enabler, do Horde Prime's clones count as characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23190251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodici/pseuds/Twelve
Summary: Unlikely situations create even more unlikely allies.
Relationships: Glimmer & Catra
Kudos: 56





	Think On Your Feet

**Author's Note:**

> Did I write this whole thing just because I wanted to call Horde Prime names? Yes, yes I did.  
> English is hard, yell at me for mistakes and awkward phrasing <3

Horde Prime has a couple of additional eyes on his right cheek. It’s such a dumb detail Glimmer almost – _almost_ – laughs. Instead, she can only stand there, paralyzed under his scrutiny, feeling just like a child. 

“It seems like our guest is of the utmost importance,” Horde Prime says and it’s not clear if he’s addressing himself as a collective, or simply using the royal we like a generic asshole.

Whether the case, he’s terrifying. Maybe the situation is. Glimmer can’t really say, everything has been so fast, it’s still a blur inside her head. The Black Garnet and Scorpia and that power – so painful, but not like the realization that Adora had been right all along about Light Hope. Still, no time to be upset with Hordak attacking her like a growling zombie and Bow, good Bow, right before all went green and black.

She exhales, blinking away that same green light. It’s the exact same color of Horde Prime’s eyes. He’s looking at her, too close. He’s talking, too, but Glimmer can’t – she can’t lose focus now, she can’t, only she is, and…

“Horde Prime, sir.” The voice, it’s Catra’s. She’s still there, right beside her and it’s ridiculous, how are they both so small and dirty in that absurd, slick-clean space ship. There’s technology that Glimmer can’t even fathom to comprehend. Entrapta would love it here. 

“I wasn’t talking to you, child.”

Glimmer isn’t sure if Catra swallowed or if it was the sound of her own head wobbling. 

“I—I’m sorry. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, princess Glitter here isn’t in her best shape,” she says and Glimmer flashes her A Look, because, really, she isn’t the one who looks like she was sleeping inside a garbage bin, thankyouverymuch. Catra’s mismatched eyes throw a glance back at her with a mute request. It’s Glimmer’s turn to swallow, then.

“I asked you to show me your powers,” Horde Prime says. “Sadly, I don’t like boring conversations where I have to repeat myself.” He speaks it like a generic statement – it sounds like a threat.

Glimmer lifts her hand again. What comes out, are a bunch of useless sparkles.

“I’m… I’m very tired,” she says. “It’s been an eventful day.”

Is there etiquette to interact with a galactic monarch? She isn’t even sure about the etiquette to interact with Etherian princesses most of the time. And who cares? They’re going to die the exact second this Hordak on steroids understands that they are basically worthless.

“Very convenient,” Horde Prime says, but then – he laughs, brief and self-satisfied. He hums to himself, then, hands entangled behind his back as he steps away from Glimmer. Her knees are going to fall apart. She’s never been in a position of such blatant disadvantage, not even when Shadow Weaver was torturing her inside the Fright Zone. The black spearheads that are cutting the fabric of space over the glass wall are all spaceships. She isn’t in the Fright Zone: she’s in the outer space, at the mercy of an incomprehensible power without her own powers. And without her friends. 

“And you, child? What is your excuse? Amuse me.”

“No excuses, it’s what I said,” Catra is saying, voice so steady. She’s incredible – infuriating. She’s such an opportunist at heart, she would sell the whole of Etheria to save her tail. She’s done it already. “I know everything you need to know about Etheria. I used to be Hordak second in command. I’m basically the reason why he managed to send the signal through Despondos.”

Horde Prime laughs once again at whatever clever joke he’s making up.

“Hordak, that’s it. What a name,” he says, and then closes in on Catra so suddenly that Glimmer’s the one who flinches, while she just remains there, still and steady like the situation isn’t that much different from a boring day in the Fright Zone. “Shouldn’t you be more loyal to my little brother, then?”

That elicits a reaction, but it’s really nothing more than a shift of her tail, hastily recomposed in a strict line down to her calves. 

“He was loyal to you. That’s what he told me,” she says. “I couldn’t read his mind like you can, so I trusted him. I’ve always worked for him knowing that, one day, you would have reclaimed command. Now that day has finally come.”

Horde Prime looks at her, studying her, and when he lifts his hand Glimmer is sure he’s going to just stick one of his disgusting hair-cable thingy inside her neck like he did with Hordak.

She didn’t know she had closed her eyes until they’re open again, to look at Catra’s still peeled ones as Horde Prime lets his fingers slick through her messy mane. He’s smirking when he pats her cheek in mock affection.

“Funny child. You’re right, you will be of service.” He snaps his fingers, and it must be a scene, because Glimmer is pretty sure he doesn’t need words nor theatrics to communicate with his creepy clones. “Treat them with the utmost regards,” he says, stepping once again up to his chair. “We’ll talk more when they’ll have slept the, ah, eventful day off. Until then, behave,” he adds, amused and so darn unnerving.

Glimmer doesn’t get the chance for a rebut; sharp nails gets fixed into her arm just as one of the clones grasps her for the other, to guide her out of the dome to be sucked inside the space ship, nowhere to run.

The lift is claustrophobic and so are the corridors. So are the identical faces of all these identical clones swarming around like it’s a mirror maze, only Glimmer doesn’t show in the reflection, like she isn’t even there. She wishes she wasn’t there.

“Wait, where… Wait!” she calls, when the plain, white door buzzes to open up onto a plain white room. “Where are you taking her?” 

The clones stop, which is honestly surprising. So they’re not completely devoid of individuality. 

“To her room. As per orders,” the closest one says. He’s grabbing at Catra’s shoulder hard, but not as hard as she grabbed at Glimmer herself. Her wrist is scratched.

“No, listen… Listen to me!” she demands, using her queen-tone. It’s a thing. It must be, because she doesn’t have any other power left here. “You can’t separate us, we… I need her.”

The clones blink at unison, and so does Catra, but Glimmer has done a lot of un-Glimmer-y things in the last few days – weeks, if you ask Adora and Bow. Maybe her best friends don’t know her as much as she thought they do – maybe she just changed, somewhere between losing her mother and becoming queen in the midst of a war. 

“I am a queen. You know what a queen is, right?” she tells the clones, looking them straight in the eyes. “Royalty. I need—I need a handmaid. It isn’t negotiable. Horde Prime asked you to treat me with the utmost regards,” she adds and that does the trick. 

The room is still white and blank and there’s no window. But it has twin beds and must be a reasonable middle ground between a Fright Zone cell and a Bright Moon spare room. Which still doesn’t clear their status as guests or prisoners. 

The door buzzes closed. Glimmer tries to sigh, but ends up falling seated on the bed, with Catra’s hand slammed on her mouth. 

She shushes her with an index raised, ears tensed toward the door. Glimmer would protest, but she too catches on the footsteps that only now are starting to move again.

“Don’t touch me,” she blurts, always too late as she slaps Catra’s hand away. 

“What,” Catra rebuts, but stepping back toward the wall. It looks solid, no chance of cracking that. “You didn’t seem that averse to my presence just ten seconds ago.”

Glimmer opens her mouth to give a retort, but nothing comes out. She closes her fist on her knees.

“Well, excuse me for thinking that it would have been wiser to stick together. Or is this going to ruin your plan to be all buddy-buddy with Massive Horde Creep, back there?”

Catra scoffs, but then she coughs, one hand pressing at her ribs. 

“Well, sorry for saving your life, princess Twinkle.”

“Oh, my bad! I didn’t notice, since you were so worried about saving yours while condemning the whole planet!”

Catra – it may be the first time ever Glimmer managed to shut her up. It’s pretty satisfying up until it’s not, and her eyes become cruel slants. She starts laughing then, and as she slips down on the floor, back at the wall and hand pressing at her stomach, she looks once again like the ghost of herself, the one Glimmer didn’t find in herself to kill even though she would have had so many reasons. 

“Princesses… Talking to you is like talking to _aliens_ ,” she says, eyes closed. “You don’t get it, do you? We’re screwed. We’re on a spaceship, Shimmer. You don’t have your powers and I’m as powerless as always because that’s just how my life works. What I was doing while you stood there like a sparkling, useless marshmallow, was trying to buy time. And it worked, so be grateful and stop sulking, we don’t have time for that.”

“Sure, we have to be ready for… What exactly? I’m powerless, as you so kindly put it. I can’t teleport us out of this mess, we’re stuck.”

“Fuck,” Catra says, eyeing her from a slit between her right eyelid. “That’s the word you were searching for. You princesses would feel way better if you started swearing.”

Glimmer growls.

“Do _you_ feel better?”

“Good point.”

Silence comes, then, and it isn’t welcomed. The air too is white and buzzing softly with machinery. Glimmer looks at her own hands, scraped from the battle, and tries to conjure her staff.

“Shit,” she ends up sputtering, when the fifth attempt leaves her with a bunch of glitters on her palms and a squashing headache. She tries to center herself, concentrate like Shadow Weaver taught her, but how can one even try to center while being held prisoner on a spaceship, no sense of direction or time?

“See? Don't you feel better already?” Catra says, flat. She’s still sitting on the ground, head leaning heavy on the wall. 

“That’s it?” Glimmer asks, frustration getting hotter and coarse inside her throat. “You’ve done your little speech and now you’re going to sleep on the floor? That’s your plan?”

“I don’t have a plan,” she answers and it’s – the white blurs in front of Glimmer's eyes for a second. 

“What do you mean you don’t have a plan? You always have one… You telling me you don’t have a plan is definitely part of your plan.”

Catra opens both eyes. 

“Wow. I really did become the baddest of the bad guys. Take this, Double Trouble… I don’t,” she carries on, before Glimmer can decide to throw glitters at her face. “As wild as it could look to you, I didn’t _plan_ to be teleported into Horde Crime’s space sanctum. I’m improvising. And I’m also pretty tired because our Hordak kinda crushed half my ribs while he was acting all riled up about some Entrapta-related teenage angst,” she adds, shifting a bit closer to the wall with a distinctive pained expression. “Maybe, if we manage to convince Horde Prick that you need to go back to Etheria to show all your mighty powers, we’ll find a chance to get me back with both feet on the ground and you to the bestest friends cheesy duo. Trio? Does the talking horse count?”

“It’s the best friend squad and—” whatever. It isn’t even worth mentioning to Catra – it isn’t even worth remembering, not if Glimmer doesn’t want to give in to desperation and bad thoughts. She breathes through her nose, clenching and unclenching her fists; it’s another concentration-thing Shadow Weaver taught her. “He’s really powerful. You can feel that, right?”

“I could smell a savage, power-hungry evil-doer from light-years. But that’s okay,” Catra says, staring at the opposite wall. “I know how they think.”

“Because you’re a power-hungry evil-doer yourself?”

“Exactly.”

Glimmer shakes her head, incredulous. 

“You’re the worst. Really. I’m just sorry that Adora doesn’t seem to be able to see it… You’re the worst of all of them, Hordak, Shadow Wea—” 

The walls, they’re pretty solid, and the beds are basically part of the room itself. Catra’s punch reverberates through the floor to Glimmer’s own feet. 

“You don’t get to decide who wins the bad guy award, princess,” she says, sputtering the title like an insult. “And, anyway, the apples don’t fall far from the tree, right?”

“Adora isn’t like you. She’s good. She… She does her best, always. She makes mistakes, but she’s never malicious, she just tries to do what’s right.” Those words, they burn on Glimmer's tongue, in her eyes, but she isn’t going to cry in front of Catra, thank you very much. She’d rather kiss Horde Prime.

Catra stares at her intently for one, two, three.

“No way I’m splitting a cell with you. Ehy, clone guys!” she yells, and kicks the door. “Throw me into a fucking pit, I don’t care, but don’t let me stay with the captain of Adora fan club!”

What the heck. Screw everything, Glimmer is going to kill her. 

“Stop it— you absolute jerk!” She tries to whisper, but it’s impossible while also performing a headlock onto a very squirming person. She gets scratched on the cheek and she responds by pinching Catra hard in the side. 

“Oh, right. Ribs,” says Glimmer, when she’s actually managed to subdue her. Catra lets out a weak squeal before collapsing on the floor, breathless. 

“You’re evil,” Catra says, but it doesn’t sound like an accusation at all. She tries to catch her breath, but it must be a painful affair, because she just ends up coughing like a pitiful, mangy kitten. 

“And you’re crazy. What if they heard you?”

Catra blinks at her, eyebrows tense.

“Are you scared, Glitter?” she asks, and Glimmer pinches her again right in the ribs. She waits out for her to stop muttering curses while she rolls to nurse her injured side. 

“No way I’m scared. I’ve been in countless battles, I’ve been kidnapped by the Horde, by _you_ , and not even a single time I’ve been—”

“That’s okay, you know?” Catra says, voice so sure and so, so bitter. Just like her crooked smile when she turns to look at her. But, for the first time, Glimmer is sure she isn’t mocking her. 

“Fear is good. It makes you think fast on your feet,” she tells her. “I’ve been scared my whole life, you get the knack of it at some point. Being scared is like having a superpower, you learn to read the room and act accordingly.”

“To save yourself,” Glimmer says, and it burns on her tongue.

“To save yourself,” Catra repeats, matter-of-factly. “It’s called self-preservation. Adora is the only one who doesn’t get it, but I think that’s because she’s never been scared in her life, not for real. Not for someone to just go and hurt her for no reason at all.”

Glimmer isn’t sure what to say. Adora doesn’t trust Shadow Weaver and Glimmer used to be the same on her behalf, only when you’re at war there are a lot of compromises that must be made – _must_ , right? 

When you’re at war, lots of responsibilities, positions, sides _must_ be taken. You have to decide and think and act fast on your feet. Glimmer can’t let herself been defeated just yet.

“Catra,” she says, and they’re both still down on the ground breathless for completely different reasons – and scared. Glimmer is scared. 

“Yes, princess.”

“I can’t die on this stupid spaceship. I refuse to.”

Catra smiles again, defiant and mean. 

“I don’t need your permission to be my worst self, princess,” she says. “I’ll get out by any means, anyway.”

Glimmer nods, scared and ready. 

“Any means sounds good to me.”


End file.
